Random blog posts about research in political communication, how people learn or don't learn from the media, why it all matters -- plus other stuff that interests me. It's my blog, after all. I can do what I want.

Sunday, May 8, 2016

Who Georgia Likes

There's a new presidential poll out of Georgia "likely" voters. First, the caveats:

It's a long time until November

This smells like a robo-poll, so beware

And it's still a long time until November

OK, that out of the way, let's get to the results. You can see a simple pdf of the one friggin question here, crosstabulated by gender, party identification, and age. If you're curious, there's a "news story" here.

Let's get to the fun stuff, what the poll tells us.

First, it's a statistical tie. The two candidates are separated by a single percentage point with a margin of error a tad over 4 percent. Another way to interpret this, via this news story, is that a "large portion" of likely voters are undecided. Below is the first two graphs and below them you'll find my snark comments before I break down the crosstabs of age, sex, etc.

A large portion of likely Georgia voters are undecided about who they
would vote for in an election between Democrat Hillary Clinton and
Republican Donald Trump.

Nearly 1 in 5 voters said they have not made up
their minds, according to an exclusive Channel 2 poll conducted by
Landmark/RosettaStone.

They emphasize right up that a "large portion" is undecided, as if that's news. Folks, it's May. The primaries aren't over yet and you're excited about a measly 16.3 percent? And whoever wrote this, for God's sake 16.3 is not really "nearly 1 in 5." That's kinda stretching the numbers. Finally on this point, I'd argue 16.3 percent is smaller than you'd expect at this point. So lede ... missed.

Now to the crosstabs. Some interesting takeaways below:

Clinton wins the two lower age groupings (18-39 and 40-64). Trump wins 65+. A note on these age categories -- they're far too wide, and what they mask is (I'm betting) very few 18-25 year olds included in a survey probably made by a computer to landline phones with, possibly, a few emailed questionnaires to mobile phones. Younger voters are, by the way, the most undecided.

Only 16 of 171 black respondents said they'd vote for Trump. I'd love to chat with those 16 folks. They must be interesting.

Trump owns the white Georgia vote, 61 to 25 percent. Wow. Still, Clinton will own the minority vote so she only has to do reasonably well with the white vote to be competitive in Georgia. If she gets 30, these numbers suggest, she wins Georgia.

Trump and Clinton take what you'd expect from the party vote, and they evenly split the "other" Party ID folks, but Clinton wins the "independents" enough to keep it close.